Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Nula Kelvina
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Runtime: 45:32
Rating: 4.3/5
Nula Kelvina have started to burn! They’re on fire! Surprising, considering the cabaret swinger sway of their debut »Možgani na paši«. During the wait for the new album, things took a sharp turn: Gašper Kržmanc became a full-blooded member of the band and took a full guitar run-up, cranking up his Telecaster. So Nula Kelvina have now grown into a quartet, even though Kržmanc had already helped the band out on stage for live shows. That the guitar has won itself a major spot in Nula Kelvina’s new sound will be clear to you at the latest the moment »22.10« (the album’s fourth track) kicks in.
The 45 minutes of music on »Drenov Grič« pick up the story from the previous album and deepen the musical identity of »Možgani na paši«. In fact, you could say Drenov Grič is an even more varied and colorful album than the more »cautious« debut. Even the intro »Prisluhni« announces that this time the band has cooked up something new and different. It’s a pleasant, dreamy, soothing prelude (that’s exactly what it’s for) that gets the listener ready for the start of the Drenov Grič story. This intro could easily have been merged into »Kako naj te pogrešam«, a tense, old-school Rhytm N’ Blues drama where everything on the album suddenly falls into place. Here the charismatic Marko Boh builds the drama superbly from verse to chorus crescendo, and as I said, the guitar holds the structure of the instrumental landscape firmly in place, building the backdrop for Boh’s vocals. Yes. Nula Kelvina have weighed »Drenov Grič down with rock.
The band’s lucidly sarcastic side shines in full on »Dan zvezde«, a penetratingly sharp yet finely placed whip of Boh’s poetry in full bloom! Cynicism is firmly nailed to the album, and flipping a situation on its head is really the absolute trick that keeps Nula Kelvina’s music afloat, since on its own it doesn’t bring any particular or original artistic provocation. Combined with the generally cheeky twisting of words into syllables that keeps the listener in a good mood throughout, it never veers off the rails of delivering the truth that chafes us in everyday life. As I said, »Dan zvezde« is one of the most successful compositions in this respect, and on top of that it slips right into your ear, a candidate for the album’s second single! But that’s cat’s cough compared to the burlesque »Danes«. A carousel weighed down with reggae rhythm, where you can’t miss the parallels with Balkan carousing in taverns. And the story? When a woman »gets on your last nerve« it’s not far from Hendrix’s Hey Joe, which calls for buying a gun. The album never runs out of women and men’s wars. Also in the album’s final stretch, where first comes »Na Golici (pod goro)«, with a cunningly built-in decorative phrase taken in the spirit of the Slovenian squeezebox melos inside a power blues rock framework, and then »Kje so roke« right after it, which lays out the doctrine of groping girls.
Since the music has always twisted in the glow of cabaret-dense blues, the solid grounding of the guitar’s chord work brings the unfolding of events into an even punchier light, with dynamic liveliness. The guys don’t hide a coefficient of sweet perversion in their stories either. Such is the cheeky, softly swaying yet teasing bluesy waltz »Med s trebuha«, whose poetry needs no analysis. »Moje poreklo« already demands a »parental advisory« sticker, a perfectly built, strictly organic blues-jazz swinger of a pulse-raiser, where tears of laughter at the sharp confessional verses are guaranteed.
A fair bit has already been said about the guitar of the new Nula Kelvina before this piece. Still, on »Včeraj« the guitar phrase steps into the forefront of the arrangement for the first time in the band’s career. Fans of hard-hitting hard rock structures, your ears are twitching already, right? Another peak in the hedonistic tale of the coolest band in the world. Chosen as the album’s first single. Entirely justified, as it’s one of the most successfully arranged compositions, and the radio waves will love it generously.
And yet this whole damn tasty trickster, which combines blues, jazz and, newly and more noticeably, rock into a juicy musical tale in its own special way, carries a recognizably Slovenian label. In the background it carries feelings of melancholy, gloom, blackness – that Slovenian brand of humor that puts its hero on the gallows of a tragic end. »Drenov Grič« doesn’t just hold onto the musical identity Nula Kelvina laid out on their debut, it deepens and expands that story. It doesn’t run out of lucid barbs, and the band proves that even among sparkling, penetrating metaphors it can’t lose the common thread, which also remains the most appealing element of Nula Kelvina’s musical starting points.
Lineup
Marko Boh – vocals, keyboards,
Gašper Kržmanc – guitar, backing vocals
Klemen Kotar – bass guitar, saxophone, clarinet, rattles, backing vocals
Jure Rozman – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Janez Dovč – accordion
Katja Varderber – vocals
Production
Gašper Kržmanc
Tracklist
1. Prisluhni
2. Kako naj te pogrešam
3. Dan zvezde
4. 22.10
5. Med s trebuha
6. Včeraj
7. Danes
8. Moje poreklo
9. Sanje
10. Na Golici (pod goro)
11. Kje so roke
12. Komad za nafilat plato
